Job Listing Description

Description:
This role requires the candidate to thrive in a high paced environment and will have an integral role in advancing the next generation of electrically powered vertical lift aircraft.

Roles and Responsibilities:
Define: Develop a highly efficient vehicle design through aerodynamic analysis that is aligned with industry best-practices. This role will have a major role in running all aerodynamic analysis and guiding the design through optimization to produce a compelling end solution.
Do: This job will be a mix of developing the in-house analysis capabilities of the company, as well as performing as an individual contributor. The aerodynamicist will take the lead analyzing a myriad of external geometries and control surfaces. Areas of focus include blades, wings and fuselage. The core output will be high quality CFD solutions and the resulting CAD surface definitions that can be delivered to the design team to produce Class-A surfaces. Star-CCM and similar CFD tools will be used in support of the design. The aerodynamicist will leverage these to the fullest extent possible to produce valid, high integrity outputs. It is also desired for the candidate to automate these tools to iterate design permutations in a very rapid manner. Therefore, some limited experience with scripting tools such as Matlab, C++, and Python as well as general familiarity with high power computing clusters to manage the job queues will be needed. In certain instances, coupled solution may be required, which would entail working knowledge of structural dynamics and control theory in addition to an expert understanding of the aerodynamic discipline. In addition, it will be necessary for the aerodynamicist to generate custom lifting line tools or similar to help assist in preliminary sizing and basic conceptual development.
Intrinsic: The role will require constant flexibility and a level of comfort working in a rapid-prototype environment. The projects and assignments will vary from week to week, so the candidate should ideally have robust experiences to draw from (e.g. aerospace development programs, Motorsport/Formula One) in order to operate effectively in this environment. The role will include interfacing with engineering management, our customers, certification authorities, operations, procurement, external suppliers, and fellow design engineers.

Required Qualifications:
• Master’s degree from an accredited university in Aeronautical, Aerospace engineering, or a related discipline with at least 5 years of professional experience in aerospace or a related field (i.e. Formula One); or PhD and 3 years of equivalent experience/combined education. Prior rotorcraft development experience is a plus.
• Excellent analysis skills and a track record of demonstrated success analyzing actual products.
• Highly experienced in computational fluid dynamics tools such as Star-CCM (preferred), Overflow and ANSYS-Fluent or similar.
• Proficient in 3D CAD surface definition via 3DExperience generative shape design (preferred), CATIA V5/V6, SolidWorks, or similar is also ideal.
• Working knowledge of scripting and automation tools such as Linux/Bash, Python, C++, or MatLab.
• Well versed in airfoil selection and optimization of custom airfoils through XFoil and other tools is also desired.
• Experience developing control laws with an understanding of vehicle flight dynamics design and analysis with MatLab-Simulink is also advantageous.
• Experience supporting correlating model outputs to actual data produced via wind tunnel and flight test runs. Prior experience with experimental methods and wind tunnel testing is also a plus.
• The job entails using finite volume software and classical analysis to help define aerosurfaces along with leading efforts to solve technical problems and providing mentoring or oversight to others. Past experience leading a team and/or mentoring others, formally or informally is an advantage.